FAUSTIAN, Part II
Fifteen minutes and another scotch later, Walter ambled out the door, feeling better almost despite himself. For his part, the Devil began doing some light dusting.
The shop was overflowing with items large and small, shoved together on shelves and tables in no particular order. A few the Devil had acquired honestly; every once in awhile someone actually brought him something besides a soul to pawn, and the Devil always paid a fair price. But most of his inventory consisted of souvenirs—things brought back by the imps from their various collections, or an odd knickknack the Devil himself took from one of his clients. A few of these baubles were pricey (like the Tsarina’s ring, or the golden teeth of one of the lesser known Byzantine Emperors, which the Devil used as a paperweight), but most had little more than sentimental value. Assuming you liked your sentiment with a heavy dose of pain, fear, and perversion. The Devil did, but he was the Devil.
He was giving a 6.5mm Carcano rifle (which had most recently seen action in Dallas, on a balmy November day) the once-over when the bell above the door chimed. The Devil turned to see a new customer standing in the doorway, one who clearly didn’t belong. He was tall, well-dressed, and confident, with nothing desperate, greedy or lustful about him.
“Starbucks is just down the street,” the Devil said motioning west, but the customer just smiled more broadly. Maybe even chuckled a little.
“I heard you buy souls,” the customer said, striding toward the Devil and holding out a hand. “I’m Kevin.”
The Devil took the man’s hand limply, caught off guard. People looking to sell their souls rarely took the time for proper introductions. “Hello, Kevin.”
“You’re name’s the Devil?”
“’The Devil’ is really more a title.”
“So what should I call you? Lucifer? Beelzebub? Mephistopheles?”
“Take your pick; I answer to them all,” the Devil responded, eying Kevin. He looked to be about twenty, maybe younger, but talked and acted like someone much older. An only child, no doubt, and one whose parents didn’t believe in corporal punishment, unfortunately. “You’re not from Medville?”
“Fuck no,” Kevin said, sweeping his gaze around the shop. “Pocatello.”
The Devil moved around behind the counter, dropping his duster into a nearby umbrella stand.
“I heard stories about this place,” Kevin said. “Most people think it’s a hoax. Not the shop, obviously; the whole Devil thing.”
“Do you?”
“Pretty much. You don’t look like the Devil. No horns, for one thing.”
“I never had horns, or hooves, or a tail, though I did walk around with a pitchfork for a century or two during the Dark Ages. It was part of an elaborate joke about sowing and reaping, but no one ever really got it.”
“I guess humor was different back then.”
“Not really. Read your Chaucer. A good fart joke is timeless.” The Devil took a seat, getting down to business. “Why are you here, Kevin?”
“A bet. My friend Sean said if I sold my soul, he’d pay my half of the rent for the next three months.” He said it good-naturedly, which was more than a little off putting. People had come to the Devil for all sorts of reasons down through the millennia, but never on a bet.
“So you want to sell your soul?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“It’s really not something you should enter into lightly.”
“Are you trying to stop me?” Kevin smirked. “You sure you’re the Devil?”
The Devil cleared his throat. He didn’t like this boy, not one bit, but a deal was a deal. “Fine. What do you want for it?”
“What do people usually ask for? Winning lottery numbers or something?”
“My clients rarely ask for money,” the Devil explained. “Usually their needs are far more immediate: love, power, health. Those are the big three.”
“Oh,” Kevin ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “Well, I’ve got a girlfriend, and a good gig at the Best Buy, and I’m in okay shape. So I guess I don’t need any of that.” He glanced at the case. Nothing seemed to catch his eye. “Is it true you play a fiddle of gold?”
“What do you want, Kevin?” The Devil was growing annoyed.
Kevin shrugged, non-committal. “Make me an offer,” he said.
“I don’t haggle,” the Devil replied, narrowing his eyes, “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”
Kevin rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets.
The Devil drummed his fingers on the counter.
“Does God know you’re doing this?” Kevin sounded like a father scolding a child.
The Devil motioned out the front window.“Ask him yourself.”
Kevin turned, to see an empty storefront across the street, boarded up and abandoned.
“Symbolism. I get it.”
“Good for you.”
“Are certain souls worth more than others? Like if I’m not a virgin, do you get 10% off?”
“Each soul, great or small, is worth the same thing.”
“$9.99?”
“Everything. And nothing.” The Devil’s words hung in the air for a moment and he locked eyes with Kevin. Few could withstand the Devil’s gaze, but Kevin barely even blinked.
“You’re an atheist?” the Devil asked.
“Agnostic.”
“That’s worse. They’re the bisexuals of the religious world.” The Devil gave a small cough that was meant to be dismissive, but Kevin held his ground.
“I don’t think you’re the Devil,” he said with finality. Mind made up. “I think you’re some crazy old dude who pretends to be magic so people’ll come to his crappy shop and buy his junk.”
“Maybe I am. If so, there’s no harm in selling me your soul then, is there?” The Devil reached into his till, grabbed a coin, and slapped it on the table. “I’ll give you this for it.”
Kevin stared, confused and more than a little insulted. “A quarter? My soul’s worth a quarter?”
“To a crazy man it is. You sign the contract, take the quarter, and live rent free for three months. Everyone wins.” He produced a contract, setting it beside the coin. “I’ll even photocopy this for you, so you have proof.”
Kevin didn’t say anything, his eyes drifting to the contract. The first line was written in florid Victorian script: “I, the undersigned, do hereby condemn my soul to the eternal fires of damnation for all eternity.” And on it went. It was a good contract, one which had been expertly drafted by a London lawyer/mass murderer of some renown.
The Devil cleared his throat, jarring Kevin back to reality.
The young man shot him a cold look. “Go fuck yourself,” Kevin said. He turned and left, slamming the door behind him. Apparently he wasn’t so agnostic after all.
The Devil put the contract away and dropped the quarter back into the register. A bet? Really? Humanity was getting dumber, no doubt about it.
The rest of the day proved uneventful; a few window shoppers wandered past, but nothing more. The Devil finished his dusting, thought about doing an inventory of the merchandise, then decided against it. Instead, he caught up on some reading, then watched the evening news on an old black and white Zenith as Vivaldi’s La stravaganza played in the background. There had been a hurricane in Jakarta, a dust storm in the Midwest, and an earthquake in Japan—all things the Devil knew he’d be blamed for, even though he didn’t meddle with nature anymore. Not since the flood. Some things were beyond even him (though he did quite like the idea of global warming).
Promplty at six, the neon orange PAWN sign flicked off. The Devil was pulling on his coat when the telephone rang (rotary, a multicolored Bakelight case molded into the shape of Bugs Bunny). The Devil answered and heard the voice of an old friend. “You’re sure?” the Devil asked, and the person on the other end of the line said that he was. “Alright, I’m on my way.”
The Devil stepped out of his shop, and onto the snowy cobblestone street that ran through Livadiya, a small Ukranian town on the shores of the Black Sea. During the Soviet years, Livadiya had been the resort of choice for Russia’s elite. Fifty years ago, you could have seen Khrushchev splashing through the waves, wearing a tight, tiny bathing suit that left far too little to the imagination, which was especially unfortunate in the case of old Nikita who was, for lack of a better word, fugly. In fact, now that the Devil thought about it, dictators were always a bit hideous (Ceasar: bald with horrible teeth; Genghis Khan: a gimpy dwarf; Hitler: super faggy; Stalin: three nipples). The Devil wasn’t quite sure why, though he supposed if you were handsome, you spent your youth getting laid; if you weren’t, you took up other hobbies—like genocide.
A man leading a donkey cart passed and gave the Devil a respectful nod, not because the man knew who he was, but because in this part of the world people still had manners. The Devil nodded back and continued on to his destination. The chateau was an imitation French affair, complete with slopping tile roofs and single, tall turret. It was like a little piece of Marseilles that Brezhev had built for his third favorite mistress, with a sign on its gate that always made the Devil laugh: “Kennedy петух дворец.” Roughly translated: Kennedy Cock Palace. The Russians admired JFK for the exact same reasons the Americans did, though their memorials to him were significantly more honest.
The Devil rang the doorbell, and a guard holding a well-used Kalishnikov answered. “I’m here to see the Fat Boy,” the Devil said, in English. The guard didn’t speak the language, but he understood well enough. The man clicked his rifle’s safety into place, and nodded the Devil inside.
The Fat Boy was on the balcony, sitting in a lounge chair, oxygen tank at his side, cigar in his mouth, naked, ashen. He had white hair and weighed maybe a hundred pounds.
“Hello Fat Boy,” the Devil smiled as he stepped out into the cold winter breeze. The Fat Boy turned and grinned through a cleft palate that made him look like some fairy tale monster—Rumplestiltskin, if he was pushing eighty, black, and hadn’t eaten since that bitch princess guessed his name.
“Not so fat anymore, and it’s been a long time since I was a boy. I have a new name now, officially; papers and everything. I picked it myself: Napoleon Voltaire Rousseau. The best of France all in one name.” His West Indian accent was still thick; it almost sounded like he was singing each word.
“You’ll always be the Fat Boy to me.”
“And to me, you shall always be Papa Legba.”
The Devil gave a slight bow and shuffled his feet in a simple two-step. Papa Legba was a dancer, after all.
“Cigar?” The Fat Boy motioned to a humidor on the table beside him, next to a silver Colt .45 Peacemaker with an ivory handle.
“I know that gun,” said the Devil, taking a cigar. “The Lone Ranger used one just like it.”
“Hi-ho Silver, away,” the Fat Boy sing-songed, blowing a plume of smoke from his mouth.
The Devil lit his cigar and inhaled, tasting sweet brimstone. “Monte Cristo?” he asked, but the Fat Boy didn’t hear―or, at least, didn’t respond. He just stared out at the sea, watching the waves crash to shore. If you squinted just right, the Black Sea almost looked like the Caribbean. Almost.
“Thank you for coming.” The Fat Boy tapped the ash from his cigar. “I didn’t think you would.”
“You called, so I came.”
“But you don’t always. I’ve known others with whom you’ve done business, and when they called you stayed away. Sent one of your creatures instead.”
“Yes.”
“So why come for me?”
“Because we’re friends.”
“We’re not friends,” the Fat Boy hissed, anger in his voice.
“No, we’re not friends,” the Devil admitted, “but you were a good customer.”
“I almost feel as though I should be insulted by that,” the Fat Boy said, and then gave a hollow, half-hearted chuckle.
“Maybe you should,” the Devil shrugged. “I remember what you asked for, Fat Boy. That’s why I came. We were standing in a jungle clearing, where two footpaths crossed. You had a beard then, and a gut, and happy baby cheeks, and you said ”I want to lead—”
“My people to glory.” The Fat Boy finished the sentence. “A piss poor choice of words.”
“You asked for something that could help others; that’s rare in my line of work.”
“But glory doesn’t feed children, doesn’t put clothes on a dying woman’s back.” The Fat Boy’s breath was coming in wheezing gasps now. He reached out a trembling hand to his oxygen tank, removed the mask, and placed it over his mouth. “I won every battle I fought against the capitalist pigs, but still my people starved. And when the fighting was over and it came time to actually build something—” his voice trailed off to little more than a whisper, “—the only things I built well were graves.”
Tears were welling in the Fat Boy’s eyes.
The Devil fidgeted, uncomfortable.
“I didn’t blame the people when they rose up and sent me into exile. Christ, I wish they’d done it sooner. They didn’t deserve what I did to them.”
“We all get what we deserve, one way or another.” The Devil replied, and he even believed it. You had to in his line of work.
“Do you regret our deal?” The Devil knew the answer to that question; they all regretted it eventually. From the woman who asked to be a star and ended up in the most downloaded video on the Internet (along with another young lady, and a cup), to the millionaire who found that he couldn’t buy love, or a cure for Parkinsons. He could buy a state of the art wheelchair, though.
“No,” the Fat Boy said. His answer was quick and honest, much to the Devil’s surprise. “I’d do it again. I would. I failed, but what my island became―cruise ships stop there now, and there are tourists, and businesses that don’t want to deal with the American government. My people eat, and laugh, and sing, and they don’t have to work the cane fields anymore. Most of them, at least.”
“And they think you were a monster. They hate you.” A bit of brutal honesty; the Fat Boy didn’t even flinch.
“So? I was a monster. But I gave them—not the People’s Paradise I’d dreamed of, but a different sort of paradise.”
“You think none of that would have happened without you?”
“Who can say? I made my deal, and it happened. That’s enough for me.” The Fat Boy tossed his cigar over the ledge, and the two of them watched as it tumbled to the trees below, embers flaking off it like burning rain.
“Do you regret yours, Papa Legba?”
“Mine?”
“The deal you made with whoever it is you made it with. God, I suppose.”
“It wasn’t quite like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” The Fat Boy arched an eyebrow in a way that said he already knew the answer.“Every day,” the Devil said after a moment. He kept his voice from cracking, but just barely. “I regret it every day.”
“I’m sorry,” the Fat Boy said.
“Sympathy for the Devil,” the Devil said, forcing a smirk.
“It’s just one more thing Mick Jagger and I have in common, besides the lips.” He puckered up, and they both laughed, though neither thought it was all that funny. The Fat Boy began to cough—a wet, guttral, wretching sound. He pressed a hand to his lips and it came away bloody.
“I’m sick,” the Fat Boy offered by way of explanation. “That’s why you’re here.”
The Devil understood.
“It’s not as bad as they say down there, is it?” The Fat Boy shivered. The wind had picked up. Snow was starting to fall.
“It’s worse, if you want to know the truth.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Then it’s all sunshine, rainbows and blowjobs.”
The two of them sat in silence then, for five minutes, maybe ten; the Devil lost track, watching the snow fall. Finally, the Fat Boy spoke. “I’m ready.” He looked up at the Devil with watery, clouded eyes. “You’ll take me, won’t you? All the way?”
“You and me Fat Boy, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto riding off into the sunset.” The Devil placed his hand on the Fat Boy’s shoulder, and the gaunt man closed his eyes, took a breath, and reached for the Peacemaker.
Bang.
The Devil stepped from the chateau onto the sidewalk outside his shop in Medville. It was winter here too, but a different sort of winter. Harsher, but purer. Simple, the way he liked it.
He locked the shop’s door, then stuffed his hands into his pockets and limped away, passing under the streetlights. Casting no shadow, never looking back.
The Devil would return tomorrow, promptly at half past ten, and the day after that, Monday through Saturday until the world ended, one way or another. God may vanish for centuries at a time, and Christ hadn’t bothered to show up on Earth since 1931 (tortillas don’t count), but the Devil came to work rain or shine. He didn’t have a choice. He’d made his deal.
Read Part I here.
By Andrew Dabb
